Try not to take things too personally. Tails devs explicitly said they were making it for regular people (activists, journalists, domestic violence victims, etc.) and mainly not for advanced users. So by design it’s a normie-friendly OS (a user is not even expected to know how to use pgp); as such, one might generally assume its users may not be “geeks”. Nothing personal there.

While asking questions and exchanging ideas are wonderful, one can also enjoy the freedom to study (one of the four essential freedoms), guessing, narrowing down a problem by trial and error. An attempt at solving the problem on one’s own is often of great value, a great way to learn, even if it’s unsuccessful; after that, one might be able to ask an even better question, which could be helpful for more people too. Either way, I think that most Monero users can happily agree with each other that we want a better version of bisq :) (Sorry if this comment is uncalled for.)

Maybe this is why no one ever posts here.

Imho (quite) a few users ditched monero.town when they had started blocking Tor.

A form of “DDoS protection” where every possibly suspicious connection is blocked permanently/indiscriminately is considered harmful both for the website itself and online freedom. I stopped using monero.town when it started blocking everyone on Tor after DDoSed via some stupid Tor abusers in 2024. In general we need DDoS protection, but it was unexpected and ironic to see that all-too-familiar “you are blocked because you’re a privacy-oriented user” screen from Cloud-something here on a monero-related website.

Today I happened to notice that they have unblocked Tor (don’t know since when) and the website still exists though perhaps being less active than it used to be.

“Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access monero.town”

For those who are still on Win 7: Firefox (and so Tor Browser) will stop supporting Win 7 soon. Seriously, you better plan to migrate to Linux. Not-so-good privacy issues aside, everyone knows Windows is not very secure/safe/convenient anyway.

Generally, votes are overrated. Especially if you’re not mainstream, by definition most people won’t support you, won’t agree with you, won’t understand you.

Some things may be downvoted because they’re too stupid. But occasionally, you might be downvoted simply because you’re a bit too early. Like, if you’d said “being gay is not crime” or something 50 years ago, you might have got downvoted… Just a thought.

Maybe what you’re thinking is like an XMR version of Bisq’s “Get your first BTC” room?

https://bisq.wiki/Getting_your_first_BTC This dilemma is real and understandable, while it’s not clear what would be the best solution:

For new users, Bisq requires between 0.002 and 0.007 BTC for traders to make their first trade: […] It can be difficult for new bitcoiners to acquire their first coins, so this requirement is often a barrier for new Bisq users. The Get your first BTC room offers one possible way to get this initial bitcoin without signing up for a centralized exchange.

Basically the same thing for Haveno, I guess.

Great post. Insightful…

Feliĉan naskiĝtagon, Moenrochan! 🎂
Mi amas vin 💌

Happy birthday!
I love you 🤟

There is another post saying they lost money trying to get Mastarcard: https://monero.town/post/872283 Sometimes something bad just happens…

Another bad experience related to Mastercard: https://monero.town/post/1791576

Cake Pay should be fine for most gift cards, I don’t think they usually ask for KYC for those.

So perhaps your recent bad experience with Mastercard EUR cards are rather exceptional?

Thanks for warning. Saw https://monero.town/post/872283 too. Guess Cake Pay may be convenient for those who are fine with KYC. Another option, that Stealths thing is more expensive (higher fees), so basically if you want to buy a gift card here or there, you’ll have to choose between (possible) KYC and higher fees. Or so it seems…

If you share (upload) your secret key, that is. A seasoned PGP users would never even imagine that.

Another related problem is, Proton assumes that it’s supposed to automatically decode a PGP encrypted text by itself, and as such, if a classical PGP/GPG text (manually encoded/decoded offline) is received, it will show an error message saying basically they don’t have a key to decode it. This is annoying but harmless; you can still manually decode it offline.

That being said, I’d highly recommend Proton and Tuta if anyone is still using Gmail. If you’re a classical PGP user, maybe Tuta is more convenient because it doesn’t try to decode anything by itself. If you’re not so privacy-aware, thinking that sharing your secret key with a third party is fine, then Proton is more convenient because it will automatically decode a PGP message you received, for you.

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According to @[email protected], Cake Pay works fine if you’re fine with KYC, and otherwise you may just lose your money: https://monero.town/post/872283

If you’re a privacy advocate not fully supporting KYC but want to try this anyway, then try a small amount, because you may lose all your money. Another recent option is more privacy-friendly and KYC-free, but the fees are higher with them.

We know the ability to get Monero will not be essentially affected—after all, this is not the first time, nor the second time, when Monero is delisted. It seems reasonable to admit, though, that ultimately the ability/freedom to spend Monero might be limited if legit (e.g. hosting) companies can’t accept it in the future—directly or indirectly because of MiCA etc. Although, what will happen in such a situation may be seen as an interesting experiment.

Since the posted link is not very Tor-friendly behind CF, similar random links just in case…

• OKX exchange delists privacy coins, including Monero, Dash, and Zcash https://www.cryptopolitan.com/okx-delists-privacy-coins-monero-dash-zcash/

Following the announcement, privacy tokens such as Dash (DASH), Monero (XMR), and Zcash (ZEC) witnessed a notable decline of up to 10%

• Important OKX Delisting Announcement Concerning Large Subset of Altcoins https://cryptopotato.com/important-okx-delisting-announcement-conrcening-large-subset-of-altcoins/

The prices of some of these tokens have headed south shortly after the announcement. XMR is down nearly 3% in the past 24 hours, while ZEC has plunged by 10%

• Crypto Exchange OKX All Set to Delist Privacy Coins https://thenewscrypto.com/crypto-exchange-okx-all-set-to-delist-privacy-coins/
• Zcash and Monero on the chopping block for delisting https://www.cryptopolitan.com/naira-is-about-to-have-its-worst-year-ever/

You’re welcome, just sharing a link, though.

While these EFF guides are helpful and all, the root of the problem is, why do we have to go through this in the first place. It’s normal & understandable that one has to go through passport control at an international airport, but why would they have to tell the officer(s) their social media nick, login, and password?! That’s a way too much, an unnecessary invasion of privacy imho…

Ah, okay. While generally a mod status itself may be nothing to worry about, “mod for homesteading“ may not look cool on your profile, depending on your life style, philosophy, etc. (You might have liked it if it were a mod for, like, [email protected])

Guess it would be more reasonable and less confusing if one became a mod only after they were appointed and agreed. Thanks for the good feedback, that makes sense!

Spam is not forbidden here. Hypothetically, even if the cake is a lie and it’s a Tor-blocking, privacy-unfriendly, centralized big player, their existence is perhaps still net positive.…?

Apparently, Stealths is being relatively popular now with some good reviews: https://monero.town/post/1386768
Not a recommendation DYOR

Maybe you can check this yourself now: a power user like someone who is already a mod got some additional menu items in “More…” under each post, which includes “Appoint as moderator”. So basically, they can appoint a random poster as a mod if they want to.

A similar thing had happened to me elsewhere and I too wondered when, why and from where this status came 😕
but practically it’s mostly like just an honorary title. So far the only time when being a mod ever actually mattered was, when someone cross-posted an ad massively and several users sent reports, saying it was spam and should be removed. Such a problem is very rare in a small community so maybe you don’t need to worry about it… It simply means, someone somehow judged, reasonably or otherwise, that you were a trustworthy user.
Technically, if you’d like to, you can use your new power to appoint another mod so you may not be alone :)

The concept may be lovely, but the fact is, many people nowadays have been Pavlov’ed to immediately ignore anything weird that says, “Congratulations! You got some money. Visit this URL and input something.” As they say, the Cake is a lie…

Monero could be a wonderful gift to a friend of yours if they’re especially interested in privacy (in that case, you might want to talk to them privately, and perhaps recommend a better wallet). Otherwise, it may be kind of like casting pearls before swine…